Ruth Lilly, an heiress to the Lilly pharmaceutical fortune, died Wednesday at age 94, the Associated Press reports.

She ranked No. 2 on The Chronicle’s list of the biggest donors of the year when she announced plans in 2002 to give $520-million to charitable causes.

The gift attracted extra attention because $100-million of it went to Poetry magazine, which had less than $1-million in its endowment. In 2003 The Chronicle wrote about the challenges the gift posed to the newly rich organization, which had vaulted to No. 92 on the newspaper’s Philanthropy 400 list of the charities that raise the most from private sources.

And today the Chicago Tribune reported that the magazine has been roiled by controversy over how to spend Ms. Lilly’s money, which has grown to be worth $200-million since her original pledge.

The newspaper said that more half of the 12 trustees of a foundation that oversees the gift have resigned or said they were forced out because they criticized the organization’s leadership. Causing frustration among the trustees: a $25-million building the foundation created to serve as a poetry center — but that one trustee called a foundation’s “monument” to itself.

The newspaper said the state’s attorney general is reviewing questions about the organization’s fiscal practices, conflicts of interest, nepotism, and potential violations of nonprofit regulations.

Donald Marshall, chairman of the Poetry Foundation, told the newspaper that none of the allegations had any grounds and he was “mystified” why the former trustees had taken their concerns to state officials.

Officials in the attorney general’s office said they had not found any violations and that Ms. Lilly had left a broad mandate about how her pledge should be spent.